


What You Love Most

by Harmony



Category: True Blood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 08:16:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1543937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harmony/pseuds/Harmony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eric is vaguely aware of something akin to an invisible thrumming in the air all around them, an imaginary enchantment exuding from the slender limbs and beastly grace before him, something that indeed feels like a shadow of God.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Love Most

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was a request from darkwolf218, who requested bloodplay with an assertive Godric. I do fulfil this requirement; however, there is no smut (yes, that's a warning - I know how much you guys love your porn, but this fic works better without it!).
> 
> Set the day after [Godric turns Eric](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlwgkYXG4nY) (the conversation from which the title is taken), whereupon they bond over a feed.
> 
> Also posted at [my Livejournal](http://silverharmony.livejournal.com) :) Any feedback would be very much appreciated.

No matter how Eric looks at it, something about it feels wrong and right, all at the same time.  
  
He had never known of the existence of these nighttime beings – the being he himself had unexpectedly become, just the day before – until his maker had appeared to him with impish grace and a proffered hand, inviting him to walk together through darkness, _a companion of Death_. And he should have expected that the beast he has transformed into would feed and live on others; but he was dying, and the prospect of life had tempted and won him over, and he had thought of nothing more beyond the pure salvation offered to him. But seeing his maker now, grasping at the young village-girl, one hand clawed around her throat, is still entirely surreal if only for the knowledge that she serves as nothing but food for them. There is both hesitancy and want stirring, awakening in him at the sight – something that gives off the sense of both wrong and right.  
  
Eric had been told just before the hunt that humans can be mesmerized, glamored into willingness; he had also been warned, much to his added unease, that such an enchantment will only teach ineffectual experience upon the first feed.  
  
‘Drink,’ the boy with ancient eyes whispers, grinning at him toothily, long fingers clenched in a firm vice-grip around the crying girl’s thin shoulder.  
  
Eric looks at him momentarily, shifting in uncertainty. But in a flash, that slender hand is around his wrist, so fast that he almost doesn’t see it coming, bone-crushingly tight and surprisingly warm and terrifying all at once.  
  
‘Trust me, my child,’ he continues reassuringly in a frighteningly silky voice, and hearing it, Eric wants to give in to him, wants to back away, wants to lay himself down at his feet, wants to give him his death and life and everything in between. He was a Viking lord who had taken many women, and had breathed and lived seduction, and this is not seduction and beyond seduction all at the same time; it's a wash of organic impulses that make him imagine the quickening rhythm of his long-gone heartbeat, a shuddering, pulsing animal instinct. Indeed, he had become a child of Death.  
  
‘Who are you?’ Eric whispers, and can’t decide whether to recoil or lean in when those dark eyes fix themselves on his, guiltlessly rapt and keenly aware, as if the Viking is all that suddenly exists on the earth.  
  
Smirking, he answers: ‘Power from God.’  
  
 _Godric_. Eric faintly echoes the name once for familiarity, the syllables enthrallingly gentle on the tip of his tongue, and he marvels at how it’s not by any means pretentious, or conceitedly proclaimed; he is vaguely aware of something akin to an invisible thrumming in the air all around them, an imaginary enchantment exuding from the slender limbs and beastly grace before him, something that indeed feels like a shadow of God. This being, his maker – Godric – feels every bit like death and life in the shape of a mischievous boy, and nothing like his mind’s picture of the afterlife, the brilliantly vivid light and glory of Valhalla.  
  
‘And … who are we?’ he voices hesitantly, under his breath.  
  
An unexpected peal of bright laughter rips through the air in response, soft and fearsome, the devastating color of merriment and enigma and knowledge.  
  
The girl between them seems to cry in even greater fright, her terrified eyes set on Godric’s sweet grin of mirth, and Eric wholly understands her terror without any attempt. Godric smiles at him, an unremitting gentleness in his gaze and in his features, his rough nails tearing so deeply into the girl’s skin in contradiction that they’re already wetly red-smeared. A quiver momentarily passes through Eric; he doesn’t know if it's born from delight.  
  
‘Drink,’ Godric only says.  
  
He doesn’t need to be told again. All the world’s hunger sets in, and he can feel his own teeth snapping violently into place, and he sinks them into pale flesh with lightning velocity and partakes of the drink he craves. It’s his first feed since he had been changed, he realizes, and he’s aware of Godric’s gaze transfixed on him in a look that feels breathtakingly close to gratification and pride. The hunger is similar and yet so different to what hunger used to be for him; the coppery heat slides down his throat and touches him with life and rebirth, satiates the most painful craving for existence the way food had never could. For the first time, the thought of having become this nighttime beast fills him with an unsaid thrill, and he drinks, and drinks, and is filled to the brim with life.  
  
 _What’s in it for me?_ He remembers his own utterance, just before he had been changed.  
  
And that velvety, reassuring voice, answering comfortingly: _What you love most – life._  
  
And he stops then, withdraws his fangs from the ashen skin; the girl has already gone perfectly still, her cries smothered, her gaze clouded over, and Eric can only stare at her in surprise. That staggering first hunger had been such that he had not even realized when there was little left to drink. The blood still trickles over his lips, over his chin, but he knows he has sucked her dry – not only a feed, but a kill; he is conscious of the fact that he is still being looked at with keen interest, and he wonders briefly then if there is anything left within himself that is still vaguely human in such a moment of finality. He sets her down on the ground and runs his fingertips down her face without a word, setting her eyelids to a close.  
  
A strange expression crosses Godric’s face, something resembling curiosity, maybe, or perhaps a mild surprise.  
  
‘You carry mercy,’ he says plainly.  
  
Eric is unable to tell whether the words are laced with disappointment; a mild self-conscious anxiety touches him then. ‘She looked as young as you may have been,’ he answers slowly as he straightens up, uncertain. He hasn’t slaughtered outside of the battlefield except when he must, and a part of him starts to question if Godric can suddenly glimpse it now, if he perceives it to be an unnecessary weakness.  
  
To his surprise, Godric’s lips curve into a smile.  
  
‘How interesting.’  
  
Eric wonders then if Godric no longer remembers what mercy feels like in all the hidden years he’s walked the earth. But this may also be his own last act of humanity, for all he knows.  
  
Godric comes forward to him then; it’s such a surreal moment, with him almost pawing the ground with his feet in primal elegance – the Viking stops in his tracks, seeing this image and almost being reminded of a scavenger, skulking in wait – and all train of thought stops completely when a slender fingertip is raised to his chin, lightly smearing the foreign blood that is still dripping there, slowly tracing it down his throat in a sensuous line.  
  
Eric swallows, speechless, his eyes wide.  
  
‘But you have never felt more alive, have you?’  
  
He closes his eyes, and can feel the faint quiver in his own lower lip. This must be a test, a small voice murmurs in his mind; because he knows Godric is drawing in and leaning in so close, too close, and Eric can suddenly feel the moist warmth of a delicate tongue trailing the line of blood back up his throat, and it’s almost as if something in him falls to ruin and is reborn – a sensation close to hairs standing on the back of his neck, or a shiver in his spine. He has never felt such devoted fear, and he has never wanted to fall upon his knees in impassioned reverence this much.  
  
‘Open your eyes, my child,’ a whisper against his jawline, an unexpected flutter of eyelashes against his chin, a soft thumb wiping the last traces of blood away from his parted lips. ‘There is much more that I’ll give you.’  
  
Eric obeys. The heightened intimacy is unique, like nothing else he has ever known; it’s more than any child’s loving embrace with his mother, more than any man’s unconditional care and loyalty for his brother, more than any kind of fulfilling warmth found within sex and a partner's skin. And Godric is standing before him, so close that their bodies almost touch, bringing his hand up to run his fingertips across Eric’s cheek, pausing right where the supple base of his palm brushes against the corner of Eric’s mouth. Godric’s scent fills every corner of his being, his consciousness, a smell of an imagined heat and blood and ardor. Without asking, an unfathomable impulse takes over him completely and he lifts that small hand from his face slightly and sinks his fangs into the slim wrist.  
  
And in that instant he feels as though he can live a thousand lifetimes, with his maker’s warm blood trickling down his tongue, making him all too aware of a hidden starvation he hadn’t known existed, washing the taste of the girl away.  
  
‘Yes,’ hisses Godric, his voice broken and heated with what sounds dangerously like thrill, and if Eric’s heart was still beating, it would have started racing upon hearing the fervor and indulgence in the whisper.  
  
He is intoxicated on the warm fluid filling him, but he lifts his mouth momentarily from the pallid skin, flowing red dripping from his teeth and lips anew and creeping down Godric’s lean forearm; before even realizing that the word has slid out of his mouth, he eagerly mutters, ‘Take.’  
  
And Godric does. Soon enough, Eric feels fingers curling tightly around his elbow and the light brush of fangs against his collarbone, fluttering slowly, gradually upwards to the base of his neck, and a lightning-fast sharp pain and gratification following straight after. He is already familiar with the immediate sting from yesterday’s transformation and yet this is still unexpectedly new, the sensation of his core being slowly drained, being shared with the very entity who made him, feeling much like utterly putting his life in his hands. It's almost a dizzying completion, to have Godric be a part of him, to have himself be a part of Godric, giving and taking, becoming almost like one being. In answer, Eric brings forward the hand that is still cradled within his and softly, reverently traces his mouth up the line of blood trickling down Godric’s arm, letting the droplets collect in the small gap between his parted lips, savoring each sliver of this connection as if it’s the last thing he lives for.  
  
 _Who are we?_  
  
Godric isn’t drawing much from him – only a graciously small amount, enough to hurt delightfully, enough for it to be a luxury; yet the lips moving lightly against the base of Eric's neck and the gentle, moist tongue gathering the faint crimson drops from his skin in tiny circles are enough to feel alike to a strange and consoling embrace. The fangs slowly withdrawing from his flesh is almost like a mourned loss, and he feels a mild disappointment, too, when he notices how quickly the graceful wrist against his mouth has also healed over.  
  
‘We’re Godric,’ a surprisingly modest utterance of solace against the hollow of his throat, ‘and Eric, and we share with one another, walk with one another, and are alive.’  
  
The Viking doesn’t know if it serves as a simple proclamation or as the answer to his earlier question, but veneration and passion surges through him at the words regardless; it’s nothing less than aching and flawless, a verbalization of a newfound intimacy, a consciousness of their suddenly-shared existence, something that he understands completely now without having to ask. The small body finally withdraws from him entirely, and the coldness of the night washes over him, and Eric can’t miss him more.  
  
Godric turns around, but looks back at him and mildly grins.  
  
‘Come.’  
  
He starts moving off with his usual primal grace, without the lightning speed, and Eric feels the corners of his own mouth curve upwards and he makes to follow; he knows that he will always, always follow.  
  
It’s long until the night is over, and eternity, too, lies in wait for them both.


End file.
